1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus for recognizing characters in a read image and generating a reproduced image based on the recognized characters. Further, the present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, e.g., a so-called digital copying machine or facsimile machine for transferring the thus-obtained reproduced image to an external device.
2. Related Background Art
In the character recognition technology, recent speeding up of a CPU and a semiconductor has enabled the processing in substantially real time at not much higher than the copying speed of a low-speed copier. Further, since most of originals to be copied are created by using a word processor and the like in late years, the accuracy in character recognition has been enhanced and come into practical use.
Additionally, the present applicant has already disclosed the technique for recognizing a character size or a character in an original in, e.g., Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 61-107876 and the like.
Incidentally, since this type of copying machine sets down and processes an image as resolved dots obtained at a predetermined resolution, the reproduced image is liable to quality deterioration in principle when copying a document which has been once copied, particularly when microcopying the document.
Furthermore, although this recent type of apparatus has a function to convert image information to a predetermined resolution to be transferred to an external system in addition to a mere copying function, a problem may occur when uniformly processing the image at a resolution for transmission.